Kevin’s Meandering Mind

Wow

This comes via Gary Haye’s blog (which I came across from a friend in the National Writing Project, who came across it via Will Richardson …) and it is fascinating to watch:

Peace (in the data flow),

Kevin

I saw a contest in my RSS called Six Sounds in Search of an Author and followed the link to the ISTE site and was intrigued.

The task: take the six sound clips and create a podcast story of some sort. The whole thing can’t be more than a minute long. Interesting, for sure. I began by looking at what the sounds were, and then listening, and then trying to make connections between them.

The story came to me quickly — a person trapped in a cave — and composed this story. I then recorded it in Audacity– mixing in the sound clips –  and sent it in. I like it.

Here is my audio story. I’m not asking you to vote, but if you do — thanks.

You should give the Six Sound story a try, too. Go to: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ProfessionalDevelopment/Six_Sounds_Contest_1.htm and check it out.

I imagine you could easily bring this kind of contest into the classroom, given enough time.  The art of constructing a sound story is amazingly complex thinking — from planning, to writing, to production. And of course, this is the whole idea of the contest — trying out something yourself and thinking in terms of classroom practice.

Peace (in the cave),
Kevin

I finally had time to check out the Domo Animate site, which allows a user to easily (yes, it is easy to use) create animated comics, which can then be shared or embedded into other sites. It’s free (always a plus) and great fun. I haven’t thought too deep about how to use it for the classroom (I am stymied again by email registrations, since my school does not have email for students).

But, check out my creations:
DomoNation.com: Interplanetary Games by dogtrax

Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!
and one that I made for my Tech Friends:
DomoNation.com: A gathering of Tech Friends by dogtrax

Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!
Peace (in the animated world),
Kevin

This afternoon, a group of teachers at my school will convene the first Community of Practice (CoP) for technology. This is an interesting development, I think, and one I certainly welcome as we move further into technology integration. We have three computer carts (two PCs and one Mac), a handful of Interactive Boards, and assorted other stuff floating around the building.

Since last year, our school has moved into regular team meetings — first, it was known as Professional Learning Communities and now it is Communities of Practice (I see a Boolean comic coming …). Whatever we call it, this networking is important to us, even as we work as a school to figure out a good balance between setting goals for the work in this circles.

My hope is that our Technology CoP group will think about ways we can share out the technology we are doing with our students with the rest of the staff and consider ways to move us, as a whole, forward. My guess is that many people who say they are using technology as only using it for students as “gatherers” of information (ie, kids go to web and copy information) , and not as “creators” of content (ie, making movies, podcasts, etc). I’m going to try to be persistent, without annoying everyone, that this is the direction we should be going — helping students to become “composers” in a digital world through the use of a myriad of technological tools available to us. I may even print out the statement by National Council of Teachers of English that now puts emphasis on multimedia in the Language Arts field.

My worry is that this group will be seen as the place where we talk about what kind of technology we need to buy next — software, hardware, etc. — and while that is important to a degree, I think we have a lot already here at my school. I want to focus on practice, not purchase.

It’s very heartening that our principal is excited about this new technology CoP group and is fully supportive of the concept. He really does believe in bringing teachers along in this direction but also knows that there will be pockets of resistance to technology. I know that, too.

I wonder if you have a similar group at your school or organization? If so, I would love to know how it is going and what advice you might give to us as we move forward on our own baby steps.

Peace (with others),
Kevin

I found out about a new music editing program that may rival Garageband but — thankfull for me, the PC user — is located all online and is free. The site is called Myna and it is part of the Aviary suite of applications.

This morning, I wrote a poem in my head about walking my dog out in the darkness of morning and then came back, launched Myna,  and had this podcast poem in no time at all. Like Garageband, you can pull loops from a large database, and you can add effects to your voice.

But, unlike Garageband, Myna also gives you the embed code for your mixed down audio tracks.

So, here goes:

And here is a video tutorial on using Myna:

I wonder how we might use this with our students because if it is easy enough to use, then I would replace this application with Audacity. I love Audacity and have used it for years, but this Myna brings ease of recording and podcasting to a new level.

Peace (in the sound),
Kevin

The classic (right term?) gets updated. More insightful information.

Peace (in the view),

Kevin

I found out about this site called Storybird via my Twitter network and decided to give it a try. Songbird is a collaborative story builder in which you are given some illustrations and you can build a flash-style book. You can also add collaborators, which I did not do (this time). Instead, I tried to fashion a story about the start of school and the magical power of books and reading.

You can read my book — called The Book and The Frown — here.

I found the experience interesting and I loved the illustrations. I did have some trouble finding the illustrations that I wanted, as they kept getting buried underneath the pile. It’s hard to explain, but I felt as if I spent as much time finding a pictured I wanted to reuse as I did writing the story. That might cause some frustration for young writers.

See what you think. Storybird has some great possibilities. (I do wish I could embed the book right here at my blog, but I did not see a way to do that from the site).

Peace (in stories),

Kevin

Educause puts out a series of papers called Seven Things About … that are must-reads for anyone dipping their toes or minds into technology and learning. The two-sided white PDF papers explore the use of a technological tool in an educational setting in language that is easy to understand and simple to grasp. I’ve often used the Seven Things papers as supplemental handouts at workshops and find it gives just enough of an overview to spark a good opening discussions.

At the Educause site, you can find information about:

• Microblogging
• Nings
• Flickr
• Google Apps
• Flip Camcorders
• Voicethread
• Alternate Reality Games
• and more

It’s worth a visit.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

This is a great video in which Henry Jenkins, of the New Media Literacy Project, talks about technology and the classroom. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. This is from the Edutopia collection.

Peace (in the exploration),
Kevin

This week, I posted a review of the new Comic Application ComiXology for the iPhone/iTouch over at The Graphic Classroom. (See the review yourself — mostly positive).

Last week, I was quite interested in an article in The New Yorker about the Kindle eReader. The Kindle has been on my radar screen but I could never get up the nerve to spend that much money on a device that works only with Amazon and for Amazon eBooks. It didn’t make sense to me. The article by Nicholas Baker (read it yourself, if you want) is an interesting take on reading with an eReader and it calls into question a lot about the design of the Kindle and what is lacking. (What he doesn’t mention is that Apple is about to get into the eReader business, so Amazon better watch out).

Baker notes that you can get a pretty good reading experience from an application right on your iPhone or iTouch, so I of course had to give it a try with Stanza. This application is pretty good, I have to say, and I spent a long morning waiting for some car work to get done reading a free collection of short stories called Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (a local author, it turns out).

I was immediately lost in the book, and not in the device or application, and that says a lot, doesn’t it? We want our technology to be seamless and invisible.

Stanza has access to a variety of book depositories — some have free books for download, some provide books that are for purchase — and the application turns the page when you touch the side of the screen. The resolution is pretty decent and you can even change the background and text colors, and fonts, so there is plenty you can do to make it fit yourown  needs. The screen, of course, is small, but I didn’t feel as if that hindered my reading of a story about a 24-hour convenience store on the edge of chasm visited by Zombies (you read that right!).

I also downloaded a bunch of books for my upcoming week in Maine, including some children’s books, although whether the battery in my iTouch will hold out for long periods of reading, I don’t know. But, no matter, my primary reading material will still be paper books. The technology is making progress, but it still doesn’t beat the feeling of hanging out in a chair, book draped open to a page, lost in literary thought.

Not yet, anyway.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin